Technological advancements have made an ever-increasing amount of automation possible in inventory-handling and other types of material-handling systems. Namely, inventory-handling systems may be implemented using automated mobile drive units that are assigned to inventory-related tasks. The level of human involvement with such automated systems has been greatly reduced, leading to increased speed, throughput, and productivity. However, there may be circumstances where it is necessary for human operators to traverse, or otherwise go onto, an active workspace where the mobile drive units are carrying out their assigned inventory-related tasks. For example, mobile drive units or other equipment may fail or break down, or inventory items may fall out of their respective inventory holders onto the active workspace floor, requiring human operators to traverse the workspace to the location where the maintenance or cleanup is needed. However, traversing an active workspace of automated mobile drive units poses safety concerns for the human operators who traverse the active workspace.
Currently, automated inventory systems may be configured to shut down the entire active workspace, whereby all of the mobile drive units on the workspace floor are stopped and prevented from moving. While the mobile drive units are disabled, one or more human operators may traverse the workspace floor to a destination on or across the floor. Although this method is safe for the human operator, shutting down the entire inventory system is a great disruption to the inventory system that causes unnecessary downtime where no inventory-related tasks can be performed.
Other inventory systems may allow for a pathway to be reserved from the edge of an active workspace floor to a destination wherein no mobile drive units are allowed to move such that a human may traverse the active floor along the pathway without disrupting the remainder of the active workspace. Although this method is less disruptive than an entire system shutdown, a less intrusive means of allowing a human operator on an active floor is still needed.